The Administrative and Biostatistics Core will serve all four projects. The core will be under the direction of Dr. Joseph Buckwalter (Program Director). Dr. Buckwalter will provide overall administrative direction and coordination of all projects. He will also be responsible for facilitating interactions between projects and investigators, in particular the interactions between bioengineers, basic scientists, experts in quantitative joint imaging, rheumatologists and orthopaedic surgeons. He will be responsible for promoting and facilitating the translation of the basic research to patient based studies and clinical practice, and for stimulating new basic research based on new information from the clinical studies. If the need should arise, Dr. Thomas Brown will assume responsibilities of the program director. Lois Lembke, Administrative Assistant II in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, has extensive experience in administering grants and departmental programs. She will assist Dr. Buckwalter with the day-to-day administrative details, program coordination and planning and evaluation of the program. Her involvement will facilitate supervision and management of the core unit and individual project budgets. Dr. Stephen L. Hillis, Director of the Statistical Consulting Center, has provided detailed statistical consultation and direction for the development of all of the SCOR projects. He will be responsible for experimental design issues, randomization of experimental units to treatment, monitoring of data collection, and statistical analysis for all projects.